What Jobs Will Healthcare Stimulus Funding Create?

The Recovery Act also includes money to boost primary care at community health centers, which typically serve the uninsured and underinsured and collect from patients only a small percentage of the cost of services rendered.

Stimulus money for the nation’s 1,200 community health centers “should create about 8,000 jobs,” says Dan Hawkins, senior vice president for policy and programs at the National Association of Community Health Centers. These jobs will include doctors, dentists, pharmacists, RNs, nurse aides, lab technicians, outreach workers and drivers.

Of those 8,000 new jobs, 5,500 had already been created by mid-March 2009 with $155 million in stimulus funds, according to Health Resources and Services Administration spokesman David Bowman.

The Recovery Act also includes $85 million in funding for the Indian Health Service to develop projects such as telehealth services.